Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Visa troubles for Indians and Chinese

Recently,
Henley & Partners, a firm that works on international residence
and citizenship planning, has published in collaboration with
International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association
that represents global airlines, a global index that ranks countries
based on freedom of travel for their citizens. In other words this
index tell us the number of countries that would allow Visa-free
access to citizens of a particular country. According to this firm,
“Visa requirements or the lack thereof are an indication of the
relationship between individual nations and the status of a country
within the international community of nations.”

It
does not require great imagination to predict that India would be
placed at a very low ranking on this index along with other poor and
populous countries of the world. In fact, India has been placed at
the the 74th
position with just 51 other countries giving visa-free access to
their countries to Indian citizens.

There
has been much discussion in Indian media about this and some consider
it as damaging to the national prestige. Eric Neumayer, a professor
of London School of Economics, writes in a paper and I quote “The
poorer, the less democratic and the more exposed to armed political
conflict the target country is, the more likely that visa
restrictions are in place against its passport holders. The same is
true for countries whose nationals have been major perpetrators of
terrorist acts in the past.” India does not fit the bill here.
There are no major terrorist organizations here, in fact country is a
target of external terrorist threats.

Some
experts believe that country’s low ranking could be attributed to
the tendency of Indians to misuse policies or there is a tendency on
the part of Indians to end up as economic refugees in foreign
countries. Certainly there is some element of truth in this but what
is wrong if a young man aspires to lead a better life and future by
migrating to a country, where he might feel that he has a better
chance? If you see history of United States, the country has been
built by immigrants from east Europe, Africans and Hispanics with
Chinese coming in later.

During
years after independence, visa situation was radically different for
Indians. No visa was required for Indians to travel to countries in
British commonwealth including Britain itself. I remember that in
1975, when I had first made a journey to England, no visa was
required and in fact there was a separate channel of entry at the
ports for commonwealth citizens. In Europe, things differed from
country to country. For Germany, no visa was required for Indians
even up to 1980's. Switzerland and France required Visa but there
were no restrictions and essentially it was a source of revenue for
the Governments.

Things
changed slowly after that and we have a situation today, where almost
all developed countries require a visa for Indians. Many countries
issue a visa only after interviewing personally the applicant. The
principal reason for this is sited as Indians tend to enter these
countries as tourists and then just stay on somehow. Britain is even
thinking of a most radical step, when a few months ago, Britain’s
Home Office issued a statement that visitors from India would have to
pay a 3,000 British pound refundable bond for visas. India was placed
among a group of “high-risk” countries that comprised of
Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Coming
back to the global index I mentioned above, Chinese citizens have
even lower visa-free access than India, with China placed at rank
below India at 82, along with Cameroon and the Congo. Chinese are far
more prosperous and have much more cash to spend. Even then, they
need to apply for visa to almost all countries. Why is it so? It
should be obvious by now that visa restrictions have nothing to do
with poverty or richness of the applicant's country. According to me,
there is a strange fear amongst most developed countries about
Indians and Chinese, flooding in and settling down in their
countries. Let me explain! For most of the developed nations, except
for USA, the population growth rates per couple are actually negative
or below population maintenance rate of 2.3. There is a shortage of
labour and all these countries need to import labour. Many Indians
and Chinese would be more than eager to migrate and work in the
developed world because of much higher standard of living. The
Governments of these countries are well aware of this fact, but the
problem is that the ethnic populations of these countries, do not
want to change demographic mixture in the country by bringing in
Indians and Chinese, who form distinctly different racial groups.
For this reason only, Britain prefers east European labour over
Indian or Pakistani labour. East European labour is racially not much
different from the native population of Britain. However we should
note that this is not only an European phenomenon. Japan and
Australia also have same worries.

Recently
Indian Government has announced visa on arrival for citizens of 40
countries, establishing an online application system for visas and
facilitating visa on arrival for pensioners and those attending
conferences. The countries under this regime also include the US,
the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Russia and China. This measure is to
boost tourism and it is likely to remain just that. If some one is
hoping that there would be some reciprocal concessions from these
countries, he is likely to be disappointed. Visa regime for Indians,
who want to travel abroad is unlikely to change and would might even
become more and more restrictive in future.

Lastly
to put things in proper perspective, out of the Indian population of
1.2 Billions, a very small percentage of people are really affected
by whether Indians have visa free access to developed countries or
not. They neither want to travel abroad nor can they afford it. For
large majority of Indians, this might just be a remote difficulty
faced by the rich of the land, and they are least likely to pay any
attention to it. For them, the struggle for survival remains the
biggest difficulty.

2 comments:

In US, where over decades, people have mixed genes, from various European countries, African, Asian, Chinese, Japanese) people are not wholeheartedly welcome. Only educated, English speaking, professionals or rich businessmen are accepted among similar natives, largely because of laws, rather than from heart. Even Spanish or Portuguese speaking poor people from South American countries are more readily accepted compared to Asians. It has nothing to do with politics, just business. Despite laws, methods and procedures, political policy, all decisions are on individual levels. One officer will give you visa, another will reject. Ce la vie!